Tony Blair knows full well he will never be able to fully escape the fallout from the Iraq war.

Mr Blair met Iraq's interim Prime Minster, Iyad Allawi, on Sunday

He was certainly hoping, however, that in the days before the Labour conference and the months before the general election, the situation in that country would have been transformed.

The transfer of power to Iyad Allawi's interim government, followed by full elections in January would, at the very least, have allowed him to step back from the conflict and focus on the domestic issues he believes will ultimately win or lose the election.

It was only at last week's TUC conference that he apologised for devoting so much time to the international agenda, and declared he was "back" to address domestic issues.

Those hopes now look dashed - and his attempt to portray the ongoing violence in Iraq as a new, and presumably unforeseen, war appears to be a recognition of that.

It may even be that the prime minister has decided that, rather than try to put Iraq behind him, he will instead put it high on the political agenda.

By identifying a new conflict and urging all "sensible and reasonable" people to get behind him - and, by implication, George Bush - he is attempting to forge a fresh consensus based on the notion that only the most wilfully perverse could oppose him in the war against global terrorism